A4 is self locking

[vwdsmguy]

My 2002 TDI locked itself while I was outside. This has happened before, but I never had the doors shut with the key on the dash. Damn, havent done this before. Luckly the hatch lock is broken so I could crawl thru the back. Is there a way to scrap this self locking feature??

 

[Diesel Fumes]

Mine does it too. Usually if you unlock the door with the fob, open a door, then close the door, the system resets and won't lock itself. As far as I can remember at least?

But mine doesn't always do this. Sometimes locks itself. It's annoying but eventually I might end up locking the keys inside the car.

I shrug it off as a gremlin typical of a car with 300k miles on it but would be interesting to hear if there's a fix for it

 

[Nero Morg]

If the microswitch in the latch is going out, and doesn't detect the door is actually open, it's will auto lock itself. It's a thing to help prevent leaving your car unlocked in case the unlock button was bumped unintentionally.

 

[hskrdu]

When the door lock modules are working correctly, a MkIV that has the doors opened via key fob will self-lock after 60(?) seconds if one of the doors isn't opened prior to that time. It serves as a security feature when the fob was pressed by accident. When a door lock module is no longer working correctly, such that it is recognized as "always locked," the car will self-lock as described above, even after the door with the faulty module has been opened, because the car never recognized that a door had been opened.

The fix is to determine the fault with the door lock module (or associated fault) and fix (see the gigantic thread on the topic).

Yes, you can use VCDS to alter how the car behaves in response to key blade or key fob options, but someone else would have to remember what all these are for the Mk IV. The Ross Tech wiki will help.